Jacqueline's First Real Photo Shoot

Jacqueline had her picture taken by a professional for her fisrt birthday. We bought the whole set, but here is a scan of the picture I chose to grace my desk in my office at work.

I will post more soon.

Trifle Not with Tired Tigers

At least that’s how we feel here in Ventura.

Frank over at Manic Viking has been keeping us posted about a tiger that was on the loose here in good ol’ Ventura California. You can read what he had to say about it here , here , and here .

The 425 pound cat was first spotted a few days ago, and coincidentally enough, just after 22 exotic animals, including lions, tigers and lynxes, were found on the property rented by Abby and Emma Hedengran. Allegedly when authorities raided the property, there was one large cat missing. A tiger by the name of “Tuffy”. The Hedengran's had initially claimed the reason he was missing from the property was because he had died. Authorities have no way of knowing either way.

When a large cat's tracks were discovered in the hills in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, authorities began a wide spread search to find it before it hurt anyone. They finally found him yesterday, and killed him rather than try and take him alive.

I feel the whole affair was handled pretty poorly. Reportedly, a local animal rescue operation, which has experience catching large cats like tigers, offered their services when the cat’s tracks were first discovered, but they were turned down.

There are no reports that the big cat acted aggressively towards any of the people who were there when he was finally found. The reason given for killing him rather than using a tranquilizer dart was that he was near a school, and it takes time for the tranquilizer to take effect. They couldn’t be sure how the cat would act before he finally succumbed to the drug.

There are no indigenous tigers in Ventura that I am aware of, so this cat had to have been introduced into the area by someone. That would mean that the cat had been in captivity before, and therefore most likely had extensive experience with humans. Perhaps he could have been lured into an area where a tranquilizer could be safely administered. Perhaps they could have called in an expert to size up the situation, and maybe take the cat alive in a different way. But instead Animal Control figured it was too great a danger to the populace, and so the big cat had to die.

In any case, it's sad end for such a magnificent creature.

Happy Happy Birthday Baby

Today Jacqueline hits the big "Oh-one". My little baby has had a great first year here in her new home, and we look forward to many more years to come.

But for now, let's take a look back over the past year...

This is Jacqueline's first day home with us. She was so tiny at 1.5 pounds that she looked like a living Beanie-baby.
This picture with the television remote might give you some idea how small she was.
Just too cute for words.
For a long while we were afraid Thalia would confuse her for a large mouse. We literally had to separate them during the day while we were at work for fear that Thalia might seriously hurt her.
Soon she was a big girl, (6.5 pounds,) and we could finally buy her cute little outfits.
When we first thought of getting another dog, we worried about how our little boy Angel might feel about it. But he LOVES his little sister.
Now my baby is a little lady, and is all grown up. She had her first professional portrait taken the other day, and when I pick them up, I will post them for the whole world to enjoy.

Be sure to check out the Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings, and the Friday Ark at The Modulator

Resume Commenting

Athenamama comments have been broken for the past few days, and I didn't have time to address it until this morning. If you tried to leave a comment, this is what you saw:

An error occurred:

Unmatched ( before HERE mark in regex m/( << HERE 209.233.5.162/ at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 209.

I couldn't figure it out for the life of me until I checked the banned IP addresses. Turns out I inadvertently put a right parenthesis before the IP address 209.233.5.162, and that was causing the comments to blow-up.

Now it's fixed, and all you commenters may now comment away.

Athenamama Management.

Jacqueline Da Brat

Jacqueline is a funny little dog. She sometimes mugs for the camera, and other times she just fools around like a little kid.
Below is a series of pictures I took the other day that captured the brat Jacqueline in action.

Finally

The Friday Ark is now up at The Modulator. So MANY critters.

Flawed Dogs

I was Googling “Opus” today and came across the Berkeley Breathed site. I noticed a link titled "Flawed Dogs" and so I clicked on it. It turns out Berkeley is an animal lover, and has written a book about pet over population. Here is what the site had to say about it.

"Flawed Dogs" was inspired by the staggering pet overpopulation problem, highlighting it with a bit of humor. But the underlying message is clear: millions of healthy, adoptable pets languish and die in our animal shelters every year. National figures indicate that about half of all shelter pets must be euthanized for want of loving homes.

There is also a link towards the end of the page for "Berkeley Breathed's Flawed-Dog-o-Matic". It has you choose two dogs that can be mixed together to form a new dog. You have to choose from a set of dogs provided by Berkeley, but as luck would have it there was one that looked like Angel, and another that looked like Jacqueline.

Here’s what would result from a mixture of the two…

Angel's Budget Raincoat

It was raining this morning when I woke up, and so Angel had to be outfitted with his makeshift raincoat before we went out for our morning walk.

I have yet to find decent raincoats for Angel and Jacqueline at any of the local pet stores. However I find that a properly applied trash-bag will work in a pinch.

The One That Got Away

Frank over at Manic Viking has a fun little entry covering Penalties for Super Bowl Commercials. But take a look at the commercial you didn't see.

Looks pretty harmless to me.

I can't wait for FCC Chairman Michael Powell to step down.

I Always Wanted To Go To UCLA

It’s been two months exactly since I wrote about my visit with the surgeon who worked on my neck over a year and a half ago. I neglected to follow up on that post, but the outcome was that because of the “complexity” of my neck's anatomy, coupled with the natural fusion, and fusion from the last surgery, my doctors want me to go to the UCLA Medical Center.

I am actually happy about it because, 1) It IS UCLA (Go Bruins!), and 2) I get a second opinion from doctors who are on the cutting edge of modern medicine. My appointment is next Monday, and I really can’t wait to go and hear what yet another doctor has to say about this.

My only disappointment so far with the whole medical experience is the excruciatingly slow pace of the insurance approval process compounded by the apathetic office staff of my doctors. If I need anything out of the office such as approvals, referrals, or even medical records, I have to ride them like Major Stanley "King" Kong rode the atomic bomb in Dr. Strangelove. The insurance people move at a snail’s pace, and God himself could not influence them to move things along any faster.

Still, I have been very lucky with the doctors themselves. They have been sympathetic, and very involved with my case. Sometimes I even feel like I am their only patient. I only hope that the doctor at UCLA is just as accommodating.

Angel Runs with the Big Dogs

Angel is a Maltese. He is supposed to weigh no more than seven pounds, yet he is a hefty eighteen pounds.

Nonetheless, he is a little guy. He can't negotiate stairs, and he can't jump up onto furniture. He likes to be carried, and when we go for walks, he takes about seven steps for my one.

But he thinks he is a big boy, and has no trouble letting bigger dogs know how he feels.

Angel met this Boxer at the Disneyland Kennel, and they got on swimmingly. Angel was just a few months old in this picture, and you can tell he was pretty fearless when it came to checking out this huge dog.

Maybe this is where he learned to get along with larger breeds. This is Angel with our other dog, Mariah. Mariah looks like she is about to take a major chuck out of our little man, but take a look at the next photo...

Mariah wouldn't hurt a flea.

Just a nice picture of Angel and Mariah. Now, for the fans of Jacqueline....

A baby picture.

Again with
The Friday Ark at the Modulator. Check it.

Early Cat Blogging: Athena

This week’s cat blogging is going to be early, and all about Athena. You can read all about her here, so I will forgo much of the back story that goes along with some of these photographs, and just give a quick comment for each instead.

This is Athena with her brother Rocky, and her sister Mitzy. It was soon after I took these pictures with a disposable camera that I decided I should invest in a digital one. I wish I had bought it sooner because this is one of just a handful of pictures I took of Athena as a baby.
We had Athena before Angel, and here she is with him when he was just a few months old. They really liked each other at this age, but as Angel got older he started getting a little bossy with her.
One of my absolute favorite shots of Athena.
Another of my favorite pictures of her. It’s just a little over exposed towards her hind legs, but otherwise almost perfect. Her eyes were framed in black just like it appears in this picture. When I first saw her I didn’t think much of her coloring, but as she got bigger I thought she was one of the prettiest cats I had ever seen.
She really loved sleeping in that bassinet.
Grocery bags are to cats what boxes are to little kids.
I always liked her pose in this picture, but felt that the bright light ruined it. It has since grown on me.
Sometimes I look up from my desk, and I still see her just like this.
Another shot I wasn’t impressed with until sometime after I took it.
Athena shows her prowess at walking along the backs of the dining room chairs.

So there are but a few of the many pictures I took of Athena during her short life. I am so happy I bought the digital camera when I did because it enabled me to take as many pictures as I want without fear of wasting any film. I saved every picture I ever took of Athena, good and bad, and I am glad that I did.

Adventure Thru Inner Space Revisited

I’ve been meaning to write this review for quite a while, but for some reason I just never found the time. But now I am home early from work waiting for the Sears repairman to show up and take a look at my dead cloths dryer, and so I thought I would take a few moments and write about this fabulous DVD I bought last year just before Christmas.

These days you would think Pixar pretty much has the whole CGI animation monopoly pretty well wrapped up. There have been a few other big budget CGI films out there, but none that seem to be able to seriously rival the likes of Finding Nemo, Toy Story, (one and two,) and now, The Incredibles. Yet, a man by the name of Steve Wesson out of San Diego California has created his own CGI recreation of one of my personal favorite attractions of all times, Adventure Thru Inner Space.

Adventure Thru Inner Space was an attraction in the old Tomorrowland section of Disneyland wherein guests could experience the sensation of being shrunk to the size of a water molecule nucleus. While a bit hokey by today’s standards, Adventure Thru Inner Space was conceived and built in Walt Disney’s time, and by men who worked closely with him. I personally feel that period of time in Disneyland’s history was the best, and the attractions that sprung from the collective genius of Walt Disney and his Imagineers were astounding for their time. In 1967 Disneyland unveiled the New Tomorrowland, which showcased many grand examples of the talent then under Disney’s employ with such attractions as the Carousel of Progress, Peoplemover, 360° Circle Vision, Rocket Jets, Flight to the Moon, and of course, Adventure Thru Inner Space. Sadly, all but the Rocket Jets are gone from the Tomorrowland landscape. In fact, that area of the park today is little more than a dingy looking wasteland.

But thanks to people like Steve we can relive some of those “extinct attractions”. Steve poured over two years of his heart and soul into his pet project of recreating this old attraction from Disneyland’s golden past, and it is such a faithful recreation that even some of the people who worked on the original attraction are praising his work. I first happened across Steve’s site a few years back while searching the Internet for information on the ride. At that time Steve had very little on his site aside from a flash animation of the very beginning of the attraction and a few photographs. Soon, his site grew with more pictures and documents relating to Adventure Thru Inner Space, and after a while he even posted a few samples of his CGI work.

I was amazed at the quality of his work, and wrote to him on occasion letting him know that there was at least one other fan of this grand old attraction that shared his enthusiasm, if not his talent. I kept current on his site checking his progress almost every week in anticipation of the final release of his recreation, and then in the end of November of last year Steve announced his project was completed, and would soon be available in DVD format.

The day it came out, I ordered it. When it arrived at my work I couldn’t wait to get home and take a look at all of Steve’s hard work. I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, it was even better than I imagined it would be. The final result was so good, I wanted to lean over the safety bar of my virtual Atomobile and look around the ride I hadn’t seen since 1986. Steve’s rendition of the attraction mirrored my memory of it almost completely, and in fact filled in a couple of places I had totally forgotten about. It is by far one of the best pieces of work I have seen in amateur CGI in general, and so far the best recreation of a amusement park attraction.

If you have any nostalgia for old Disneyland attractions, then this DVD is for you. There are some pretty good videos of Adventure Thru Inner Space available on the web, and also on eBay, but the ride was so dark that the home video cameras of the time couldn’t gather enough light to fully capture the ride. Here it is again in full color, and bright detail. It is as close as you can get to experiencing the ride without building your own time machine and going back to Disneyland between 1967 and 1986. Steve even included a couple of bonuses on the DVD, so you get not only the Full CGI ride through of Adventure Thru Inner Space in Full 5.1 Surround Sound, but you will see a vector line ride through of attraction, animation tests, render mistakes, an alternate camera fly though, 360 chair model test, image slide show with over 80 images and close up shots, images of all 8 display boxes in the lobby scene, alternate "Back on visual Eye" scene, animation composite example, and commentary of the problems and issues with the ride-thru narrated by Steve Wesson himself.

One more thing. I was surprised, and am honored that Steve was kind enough to include me in the credits section of this fantastic DVD. My only contribution was a few e-mails urging Steve on, and congratulating him on his progress every now and again. Once or twice I may have even sent him a photo of the attraction for use on his site. That Steve thought enough of my support to include me in the credits is great honor for me, but Steve deserves full credit for bringing this great part of Disneyland history back to life for all of us who remember it, and wanted to see it again.

Thanks, Steve.